Private Detective Season: The Rose Medallion
One of the reasons I enjoy doing posts in themed series is that I invariably find wonderful programmes that I wouldn't know about if I wasn't doing that series of posts. The Rose Medallion (1981) is the first series doing this private detective season has caused me to discover, and its delightful.
But first I must mention a misconception about this show which is all over the internet. It's about an inquiry agent called Harry who lives with his cousin Stanley who is considered too 'irresponsible' not to be in Harry's care. Stanley does, however have a job working a digger and the point of the series is that Stanley digs up a skeleton with his digger, and the rest of the series if about the identity of the skeleton and what happened. You will unfortunately read that Stanley uncovers it in Sicily, which isn't correct (although the later part of the three episodes takes place on location in Sardinia). The people who are repeating this misinformation from each other and posting it all over the place obviously haven't watched the series *at all*. Seriously, look at the picture which illustrates the post. The only place in the world that picture of the cousins playing Happy Families surrounded by washing would be here in Albion. It even embodies the genuinely ancient tradition of moving into the kitchen for the winter, as being the only warm part of the house. The only time that scene would change would be when Donald Trump invades, when playing Happy Families will be replaced by us getting out whatever instrument we can play, even if it's the triangle or the spoons, and playing a tune called [checks notes], er, 'America'.
Anyway the origin of the mystery starts here in Blighty. But please don't run away with the idea that it's in any way parochial or overly local or even predictable.
Harry arrives fully-formed as the archetypal private detective. He's a complete failure with women, in fact we see him fail with a woman in the show. That said, he isn't really in a position to do anything more than see a woman sneakily because the last time Stanley found him with a woman, he attacked the woman and Harry had to knock him out with an axe handle to stop him. So Harry's detective background is fully filled in by his role in care in the community, and we want to love him because of his clear sense of responsibility and duty, but also we are prompted to be revolted by him because when even Stanley prompts him to put on clean clothes, he won't because he doesn't intend to get run over that day.
The village cousins start doesn't stop this show introducing a police detective from the USA, though. He's played by Shane Rimmer, who turns out to have been Canadian in fact, and apparently is an incredibly well known actor who played every American character in British TV and films for decades, which makes it all the more embarrassing that I've somehow managed to miss him completely. He's introduced to Harry by the local police, who ask him to help Sgt Kusborski investigate the skull Stanley's found, which is suspected to belong to a member of the Capelli crime family.
This show is a wild ride, and Harry himself says it's hard to believe he's still in England.
He's then employed by Selina Cantrell from the USA who waves a medallion in the shape of a rose in front of him and suspiciously wants to know about the New York police officer. And thus the chase is on.
There is vanishingly little about this show online (and I haven't read the novel it's based on) and so I'm having to draw my own conclusions about what I'm seeing. As you can tell there's a lot going on in this show, which I would guess is probably to give the viewer a number of suspicions, threads of plot, and so on. I would normally be tempted to say that the plot is over-ambitious and far-fetched for a show about a down at heel inquiry agent who would otherwise be working on divorces, but I actually think it works in this show. It's so far-fetched, but so endearing, that it makes a great show. It's as if Bruce Crowther, who wrote the novel, and John Foster, who dramatised it, threw everything they had from the PI genre at the wall to see what would stick, and somehow pulled it off.
I particularly appreciate the summing up of what has happened in the final episode: so many shows which set out to confuse the viewer then fail to clear up what has actually happened.
Of course there are various criticisms if you stop suspending disbelief for a moment. There is the obvious one that what happens when a dead body is found, is you ring the constabulary, who are also not in the habit of asking private investigators to help detectives from New York to investigate possible murders. Then we have the problem that Sgt Kusborski starts waving a gun around 'because he likes to be alive' and would already have been told very firmly that he wouldn't be needing that. Finally there's an issue with Harry and Stanley's relationship. Stanley's history of violence is documented but the reason he's perceived not to be able to look after himself is never made clear, especially given that we do see him looking after Harry. I suppose it's possible he has a mental illness, is autistic, or even has a mild learning disability, but the show confuses it by having him tell Harry to put clean clothes on, which should surely be the other way round. That said, as I say I think confusion is the desired effect of this show in many ways.
'I feel like I'm in the middle of a bad B-movie,' says Harry. But I love the hard-drinking and -smoking detective milieu of this show and the way it combines with a treasure hunt with American gangsters thrown in, oh, and an episode abroad. This show is absolutely wild and you have to watch it at once.
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